Need help with initial setup

[hansolo77]

So I'm completely new here. This is my first post. Please be kind.

I've been using Windows Media Center for years. Love how easy it was to setup and make work. However, I'm getting a little anal about the noise my HTPC creates with all it's fans and stuff. So I've bought myself a Raspberry Pi 2 in the hopes that Kodi will be able to perform as well as WMC does. The thing about the Pi, it doesn't have PCI(e) slots for tuners. That's not really a problem though since I have a custom built Windows Server (2012 R2 Standard) I've been working on. I use that to store all my music, pictures, downloaded tv shows and movies. I use Emby also. It dawned on me; Why not use the server, which is on 24/7 in the other room, to do all my recording, and just transfer all the tuners into that. When I learned that Kodi has support for this sort of thing, I immediately started researching what I needed to do. I have 4 tuner cards, with 1-2 tuner's built into them. Each is built by Hauppauge. To be safe, I only removed one card for testing for the moment. I installed the card, then the drivers and rebooted. Windows Server seems stable, and the Device Manager is sitting happy. I then installed NextPVR. Then a quick glance through the settings yielded an alert about DirectX Runtime not existing. Looking up how to install that on a Server brought me to a webpage that said it is installed automatically through Windows Update. Well poop. Windows Update didn't install it, of course. So I just skipped that for now, thinking I could probably install ffdshow or LAV filters and everything would be good. I then found a download for just that, and also one for SAF filters. I installed them both, then rebooted. Now NextPVR is happy as far as decoders. I then went through the process of setting up the tuner. The tuner I have installed is the HVR-1600, which comes with 1 Digital (ATSC) tuner and 1 Analog (NTSC) tuner. However, when I load it up in NextPVR, it correctly identifies the first tuner as ATSC but incorrectly identifies the 2nd as QAM. It is not a QAM, it is analog. The ATSC tuner is connected to an HD Antenna to pick up the free Over The Air (OTA) HD in my area. The analog tuner is connected to my cable which I use their provided "cable-ready tv service". We have a DVR in the living room, but without a box it's just cable-ready. So anyway, I went through and scanned for channels with the ATSC, and it correctly found about 10 of them. Then I tried to scan for the channels on the analog and it's not finding anything. It went through like 100 channels. The window says "Digital Channel Setup", but it's not a digital tuner.

Is there a way to fix this? What do I have to do?

[sub]

The tuner I have installed is the HVR-1600, which comes with 1 Digital (ATSC) tuner and 1 Analog (NTSC) tuner. However, when I load it up in NextPVR, it correctly identifies the first tuner as ATSC but incorrectly identifies the 2nd as QAM. It is not a QAM, it is analog.

The digital tuner in the HVR-1600 supports both ATSC and QAM, so you'll see both listed on the Settings->Devices screen. If you added the analog components (see sticky thread), then you'd also see an 'Analog' entry listed along side the ATSC and QAM ones. ie, if you'd installed the Hauppauge WinTV software, then you'd also see the Analog device listed.

[hansolo77]

Ah. So it would actually show 3 tuners.. and it only shows 2 because I didn't install the WinTV software... I see. Yeah all I installed was the driver alone. I'll see if I can find the software.

[sub]

Ah. So it would actually show 3 tuners.. and it only shows 2 because I didn't install the WinTV software... I see.

Yep. They're not really tuners, but a more abstract "logical device".

[hansolo77]

Ok so I went with the 2nd method (mostly because I don't have an optical drive attached to my server to be able to install from the CD). I downloaded the WinTV7 program, and the bat file. Ran the bat file, and it says it was successful. I then rebooted to be safe. Now NextPVR does show the analog device. I'm trying to scan the available channels like I did with the ATSC but it's not listing them. Is there another step I need to take?

[sub]

Do you really have analog cable channels? Most cable networks have moved to digital now.

Do you see your analog channels in any other software? (ie, telling us it is hooked up correctly, and should be getting them)

[hansolo77]

As far as I know. Like I said, I have 4 tuners, 3 are still installed in the HTPC, and I can verify that they are receiving channels. The cable-ready is analog. I wonder if I should try installing the WinTV7 Software legit, and verify I can see channels. I think the way I have it working right now, there's no way to check because I'm remote desktoped into the server.

[sub]

I wonder if I should try installing the WinTV7 Software legit, and verify I can see channels.

Yep, might be worth doing that.

I don't remember anyone else using analog tuners on Windows Server. To get digital tuners working on Windows Server you typically have to install BDA components. I'm not sure if analog has some similar requirements. If WinTV works though, then NextPVR should too.

[hansolo77]

Alright here's where I'm at...

I had a feeling a couple months ago that one or more of my tuners were starting to die on me. Specifically, I was getting a bunch of recorded TV shows playing back with huge amounts of ugly static. Then out of the blue every now and then I would just get a black screen with some bits of multi-colored static. I chalked it up as the cable company going through some issues or something, since it would remedy itself later on (apparently using a different tuner if "no signal detected"). So the tuner I had taken out was apparently the one that was failing. I could pick up the HD OTA channels just fine. But whenever I was playing back the analog stuff (after I remedied the SoftPVR issue) I was getting that black screen with multi-color bits again. I tried using different cables, but it didn't go away. So I pulled it and installed a spare card (PVR-150, from like 2004) and had the same thing happen. I know I pulled the 150 years ago but couldn't remember if it was because I simply upgraded, or because it had died. Well, it was doing the exact same thing! So I pulled it and put in my newest card, a PVR-2250 (1 jack, 6 tuners more or less (it has 2 tuners, but can be used as either 2 analog, 2 ATSC or 2 QAM!)). Plugged in my cable feed and it worked perfectly! Just like it should have done all along. So I guess the card I had been using was only useful in Windows Media Center as an OTA tuner.

Anyway, now I'm in my next hurdle.. the EPG. I read all the stuff about how people in the USA typically use Schedules Direct. But I saw another option which uses Microsoft's Media Center feed and converts it to xml. I thought to myself "That's what I'll use since I've been using it for years already". Well, I went through the steps, got the channels listed in NPVR, but they don't list any tv show information, just the channel ID's. Is there something I'm missing here? Maybe I need to use a different provider?

Also, I was able to play live tv in Kodi on my Raspberry Pi, while connected through the network to the server running NextPVR. The audio seems a bit off. Do I need to worry about configuring all the decoders/filters, etc if I'm playing on another device? Seems to me like those settings aren't necessary. Would like to know more about that if I could!

Thanks for your help!

[sub]

Anyway, now I'm in my next hurdle.. the EPG. I read all the stuff about how people in the USA typically use Schedules Direct. But I saw another option which uses Microsoft's Media Center feed and converts it to xml. I thought to myself "That's what I'll use since I've been using it for years already". Well, I went through the steps, got the channels listed in NPVR, but they don't list any tv show information, just the channel ID's. Is there something I'm missing here? Maybe I need to use a different provider?

mcx2ml? I think that stopped working back in July when Microsoft changed data providers.